{"id":10861,"date":"2013-10-04T17:32:44","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T17:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10861"},"modified":"2013-10-04T17:32:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T17:32:44","slug":"jonathan-jansen-backtracks-on-anti-afrikaans-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10861","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Jansen backtracks on anti-Afrikaans statement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jonathan<\/a>
Jonathan Jansen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A careful argument on language in education has been distorted to create a media hype, Free State University rector Jonathan Jansen said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“It still amazes me how a careful argument about language inclusivity can be seriously distorted for maximum media hype,” Jansen said on his twitter account in reply to a report about a speech in September.<\/p>\n

Afrikaans newspapers Beeld and the Die Volksblad published front page articles on Jansen’s opinion that exclusive white Afrikaans schools and universities held a danger for race relations in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Jansen’s comments were made while delivering the Percy Baneshik Memorial Lecture of the English Academy of South Africa on September 18.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Jansen said English and not Afrikaans could be the “taal van versoening” — language of reconciliation — for South Africa.<\/p>\n

He said English could also be the one major solution for the crisis in education.<\/p>\n

“Instruct every teacher and every child in English from the first day of school rather than add the burden of poor instruction in the mother-tongue in the foundation years to the trauma of transition to English later on.”<\/p>\n

Jansen said for many parents English was already the language of choice in schools.<\/p>\n

The reason for this was that indigenous languages were poorly taught.<\/p>\n

He said learning in a mother tongue was no guarantee of improved learning gains in school.<\/p>\n

The Kovsie rector said English could be the foundation for a common language. He said he understood that the symbolism of supporting indigenous languages had a political value beyond his pragmatic reasoning.<\/p>\n

Language differences were of themselves not contentious, but the mobilisation of languages for political purposes constituted the problem.<\/p>\n

For this reason Afrikaans-dominant white schools and universities represented a serious threat to race relations in South Africa, he said.<\/p>\n

“You simply cannot prepare young people for dealing with the scars of our violent past without creating optimal opportunities in the educational environment for living and learning together.”<\/p>\n

Jansen said English had levelled the playing fields in the historically Afrikaans universities for common engagement between students.<\/p>\n

The Kovsie rector confirmed his opinion on English as a reconciliation language in a tweet on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“I also believe that there is no way in which young people across divisions can heal past rifts without a common language; that is English,” Jansen’s tweet read. – Sapa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A careful argument on language in education has been distorted to create a media hype, Free State University rector Jonathan Jansen said on Wednesday. “It still amazes me how a careful argument about language inclusivity can be seriously distorted for maximum media hype,” Jansen said on his twitter account in reply to a report about … Continue reading “Jonathan Jansen backtracks on anti-Afrikaans statement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12259,6739,2771,6740,65],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-afrikaans","tag-jonathan-jansen","tag-language","tag-percy-baneshik-memorial-lecture","tag-race"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/jansen_praying_mantis.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10863,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions\/10863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}